Our series continues with the champion filly whose come-from-behind style wowed the crowds for three seasons in which she won 12 of her 22 races – and finished worse than third only once on the final start of a glittering career
You can’t always judge a book by the price tag, which is exactly what trainer Jerry Hollendorfer found out not long after Blind Luck entered his Southern California barn in the summer of 2009, fresh from a maiden win in Florida that was almost too good to be true.
The callow two-year-old won at first asking for her new people, then commenced a cross-country shuttle of 20 graded stakes appearances over 26 months that rose to championship heights and a place among this reporter’s gallery of great, overachieving fillies.
Blind Luck emerged from the first crop of Pollard’s Vision, a son of Carson City and the unraced Dixieland Band mare Etats Unis. Such a mating provided Pollard’s Vision with the cherished cross of Mr. Prospector and Northern Dancer bloodlines, of which he took ample advantage. In a racing career of 23 starts for Todd Pletcher, Pollard’s Vision won four graded stakes, including the Illinois Derby, and placed in seven others.
He was blind in his right eye from birth, which inspired owner David Moore to name the colt for Red Pollard, Seabiscuit’s jockey, who lost the sight in his right eye in a racing mishap. The Oscar-nominated movie Seabiscuit was released in July 2003, three weeks after Pollard’s Vision made his racing debut.
Over 13 full seasons at stud, Pollard’s Vision saw duty in Kentucky, New York, and Oklahoma before he was pensioned to Old Friends Equine. Not surprisingly, there was no lack of creativity naming his sons and daughters. They included stakes winners Eye Luv Lulu, Vision Perfect, Twentytwentyvision, and Got Shades.
‘Blind Luck’ was a no-brainer, being out of the Best Of Luck mare Lucky One. In terms of the gene pool, however, the direct female family supplied only a modest record of achievement until arriving six generations back at Suntop, winner of the 1943 Irish 1,000 Guineas and Irish Oaks. Blind Luck’s recessive chestnut coloration traces no doubt to a 4x5 cross to the golden Raise a Native. Suntop also answered to chestnut.
Lucky One sold as a yearling for $77,000, made 15 starts, and won once, for a $30,000 maiden claiming tag. In late December 2005, Lucky One was claimed for $15,000 by Dr. William Baker, a veterinarian and proprietor of Fairlawn Farm in Kentucky. After two races for Baker in early 2006, she went from the track right to the breeding shed. Then, on April 20, 2007, Lucky One produced her Pollard’s Vision filly at Baker’s farm.
When Blind Luck was first offered for sale in Lexington at session two of the 2008 Fasig-Tipton select yearling auction, the reaction was a resounding yawn. Of the 305 hips that sold, her price tag of $11,000 was at the absolute bottom. No horse went for less.
Reedy chestnut with a white anklet
Trainer and former jockey Juvenal Diaz was the buyer for Omega Farm. For their 11 grand they got a reedy chestnut with a white anklet on her left hind and an irregular blaze that began from beneath her forelock and did not end until it tickled her right nostril.
The following year, Diaz tried selling the filly at the OBS spring sale of two-year-olds, but there were no takers beyond a $10,000 reserve. Reportedly, she treated her pre-sale breeze as if paid by the hour.
Two months later, Diaz did the only thing left and entered Blind Luck for a $40,000 claiming price against nine other maidens going 4½ furlongs at Calder Race Course in Miami. Sent off at a fat 5-1, Blind Luck won by 13½ lengths.
(There will a brief pause for the reader to consider how fast a horse has to be to put 13½ lengths on the next horse going just half-a-mile plus 110 yards. Without a head start.)
There were no takers, but word got out. The dust had hardly settled from that June 21 blowout when Tony Diaz, Juvenal’s brother, pulled Jerry Hollendorfer (right) aside one morning at Golden Gate Fields. Tony was a former Bay Area riding kingpin who, like his brother, had turned to training.
“Tony told me I needed to call Juvenal,” Hollendorfer said. “He wanted to sell this filly who just broke her maiden. I got on the phone with him and we made the deal.”
Rafael Bejarano took Blind Luck for a test spin and came back with thumbs up, then agent Mark Cornett stepped up to put the finishing touches on the transaction, which Hollendorfer said included a price significantly higher than the $40,000 claiming price. That’s what a 13½-length score will do.
“Everybody involved felt like she was worth paying a premium for,” Hollendorfer said.
Everybody included the loyal Hollendorfer clients Dr. Mark Dedomenico, John Carver, and Peter Abruzzo, as well as Hollendorfer himself, who owned a portion of many horses in his public stable. Taking advantage of that claiming race, they put Blind Luck right to work in a starter allowance on July 29 at Del Mar. The memory is still vivid for trainer Dan Ward, Hollendorfer’s assistant at the time.
A lot of class
“She walked out of the gate, left dead-last, then won impressively,” Ward said. “After that she was second in the Del Mar Debutante, and we knew she was a filly with a lot of class.”
Blind Luck went on to take the Oak Leaf Stakes and Starlet Stakes, both G1 events, and finish third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, beaten less than a length. Her record was good enough to be among the three finalists for an Eclipse Award, although the trophy went to Breeders’ Cup winner She Be Wild, who never won another race.
In contrast, Blind Luck was just getting warmed up. The first part of her three-year-old campaign included victories in the Las Virgenes Stakes at Santa Anita and the Fantasy Stakes at Oaklawn Park, which sent her to the Kentucky Oaks as the favorite.
Hollendorfer already had two Oaks to his credit, but nothing prepared him for the wild ride from Blind Luck, who came from last of 14 under Rafael Bejarano to beat another West Coast filly, Evening Jewel, by a nose.
“She could do that, really get the heart pumping,” Hollendorfer said. “That was her style though. She always finished big.”
Back home for the Hollywood Oaks, Blind Luck proved a bit travel-weary and settled for second to Switch, a daughter of Quiet American who went on to hit the board three straight years in the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint.
Emerging local talent
One month later, Blind Luck was on the road again, this time to Delaware Park, where she would meet an emerging local talent named Havre De Grace in the Delaware Oaks at a mile and one-sixteenth.
The track was slick with mud after a siege of summer rain, and once again Blind Luck trailed early, while Havre De Grace closely tracked the pace. Carrying six more pounds than her rival, 122-116, Blind Luck uncorked a steady run on the outside under Joel Rosario to gain even terms as the wire approached. At the line, Blind Luck got the head bob to win by a nose.
Now clearly the division leader, Blind Luck resumed training on the synthetic surface at Del Mar.
“I think she had an advantage going from synthetic surfaces in California to dirt in the east,” Dan Ward said. “She would work on a Tuesday at home, then ship to places like Kentucky and New York and win without having a work over the track.”
Come the third week in August, it was back on a plane for Blind Luck, destination Saratoga Springs, New York, where she would meet Havre De Grace again in the Alabama Stakes.
What unfolded was a very European kind of classic, with the six riders eyeing each other through six of the 10 furlongs in 1:14.81, and Blind Luck as usual out the back.
Havre De Grace and Jeremy Rose got first run on the turn and made for home, as Rosario banked into the Saratoga stretch with Blind Luck and set down for the drive.
Havre De Grace, the bigger filly, reached willingly through the final sixteenth, but Blind Luck, scampering along under Rosario with her rapid fire strides, was gaining steadily and flashed under the line a neck to the good, while shading 24 seconds for her final quarter-mile.
Simmering rivalry
The simmering rivalry came to a full boil in the Cotillion Stakes at Parx Racing on October 2, at a mile and one-sixteenth on a track notorious for accommodating early speed.
The weights, determined by allowances, tipped dramatically in favor of Havre De Grace, who carried only 114 pounds to Blind Luck’s 124. Each filly stuck to their script – Havre De Grace forwardly placed and Blind Luck trailing all—but the 10 pounds made the difference. Havre De Grace won by a shrinking neck.
“I knew we were taking the worst of it with the weights,” Hollendorfer said. “But she needed to run in that race to be ready for the Breeders’ Cup in Kentucky.”
By then, the Breeders’ Cup Distaff was being called the Ladies Classic, for whatever reason, and was scheduled for November 5 at Churchill Downs. Blind Luck was favored over Havre De Grace and a group of older fillies and mares that included Life At Ten and Unrivaled Belle, the one-two finishers in the Beldame Stakes, and Spinster Stakes winner Acoma.
What figured to be a stern pace between the two New Yorkers evaporated when Life At Ten was pulled out of the race early in some kind of distress. Unrivaled Belle took an easy lead approaching the far turn and won by a comfortable length and three-quarters, with Blind Luck charging hard for second, catching third-placed Havre De Grace by a length at the end of the nine furlongs.
At the Eclipse Awards Dinner earlier that year, the Blind Luck contingent thought they had an outside chance to win the grand prize. When the glitterati of the sport convened in Miami in January 2011 to crown the champions of 2010, there was very little drama in the three-year-old filly category. Blind Luck received 237 of the 238 votes cast.
Spinning wheels
Commencing her four-year-old campaign, the filly was confronted with a new surface at her Santa Anita home. A more traditional sand and clay mixture had replaced the synthetic main track, much to the chagrin of Hollendorfer, who watched Blind Luck basically spin her wheels in a pair of second-place stakes finishes to begin the season.
“We might have to leave town,” the trainer said.
Which is exactly what he did. Blind Luck, still shy of 100 percent fit, headed for Oaklawn Park and a fifth confrontation with Havre De Grace in the Azeri Stakes. The eastern filly had it all her own way on the lead and won by 3½ lengths over a steadily closing Blind Luck, now ridden by Garrett Gomez. Hollendorfer was not happy with the outcome, but far from discouraged.
“She never gave up,” he said. “It was our job to get her fit for the next one.”
Blind Luck celebrated the one-year anniversary of her Kentucky Oaks triumph by winning the 2011 La Troienne Stakes at Churchill Downs on Oaks day, evening the score with Unrivaled Belle in the bargain.
After that, it was back to California for an efficient win over Switch on Hollywood Park’s synthetic surface in the Vanity Handicap. Then came Armageddon, and one last battle with Havre De Grace in the Delaware Handicap at a mile and a quarter on July 16.
On the same day at Hollywood Park, Dan Ward was sending forth the Quiet American filly Killer Graces in the Landaluce Stakes for two-year-olds. Killer Graces did her job, winning by half a length. It was about 2.40pm (PDT) by the time Ward wrapped up post-race ceremonies – just as Blind Luck and Havre De Grace were entering the starting gate at Delaware.
“Thirty seconds later I watched the race on the monitor right there in the winner’s circle,” Ward said. “What a race!”
By then, Havre De Grace had matured into a powerful four-year-old, unbeaten in three starts that season. Once again she led Blind Luck on a merry chase, but this time Blind Luck attacked earlier, and by the time they reached the eighth pole the two fillies were side-by-side in the heavyweight battle of the year.
Hollendorfer was watching the race on a TV monitor just inside the clubhouse.
“Did she win?” he asked a friend nearby as the fillies hit the wire as one. “I think they beat us.”
Delaware double
They did not. Again, the margin was a nose, as good as a mile, and Blind Luck had become the first horse in more than half-a-century to win both the Delaware Oaks and Handicap. Havre De Grace carried two more pounds that day, 124 to 122, which was of small consolation to her people, who had to face the fact that their mare had lost four of six meetings with the Hollendorfer chestnut.
There would be no seventh.
“When she got back to Del Mar after Delaware, she was kind of stiff, not wanting to work,” Ward said. “Fillies will always tell you when they’ve lost interest. And she had certainly done enough.”
Blind Luck ran once more, merely going through the motions over Santa Anita’s main track in the Lady’s Secret Stakes to run worse than third for the first time in 21 starts. In the meantime, Havre De Grace went on to win the Woodward Stakes and the Beldame Stakes in New York, doing just enough to earn Horse of the Year honors in a season bereft of male standouts.
The 2011 season also marked the induction of Jerry Hollendorfer into the Thoroughbred racing Hall of Fame, just a few weeks after the Delaware Handicap. Fourteen years later, he is still waiting to be joined by Blind Luck. “I think she certainly deserves to be in the Hall of Fame,” said Hollendorfer recently.
Hall of Fame denied
There are many who would agree. Unfortunately, not all of them are among the Hall of Fame voters who have had a chance to induct Blind Luck every year since 2018.
Certainly, Blind Luck’s record ages well. Fewer and fewer North American Thoroughbreds can claim to be G1 winners at two, three, and four.
Upon her retirement, Blind Luck went through Keeneland’s prime bloodstock sale in November 2011, but Mark Dedomenico could not let her go. He bought out his partners for a hammer price of $2.5 million.
In 2015, Dedomenico consigned Blind Luck to Keeneland’s January mixed sale while in-foal to sprint champ Midnight Lute. Her reserve was not attained, then in 2019 Blind Luck was sold in a private transaction to the Shadai group based on the northern Japanese ‘horse island’ of Hokkaido.
Of her seven foals, six have raced and four were winners, among them Kafoo, a son of Curlin, who was stakes-placed in Dubai and still racing (at a significantly lower level) in early 2025.
In September 2024 it was learned that Blind Luck had died the previous April, two days after foaling a colt by two-time Japanese Horse of the Year Kitasan Black at the Oiwake Farm of Haruya Yoshida.
Credit to the staff at the Paulick Report, who ran with a tip and traced the notation of her death to the Japanese Studbook Database. It is a shame, though, that her caretakers did not let the racing world know right away of the death of a treasured American champion on foreign soil.
“There’s not too many fillies who could do what she did, with her style of running,” Hollendorfer added. “She took the worst of it, and gave it her best every time.”
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